Our round finishes at the shed where Chinese lads, out of long sheets of lead, are glibly making lead cases by moulding them, hatterlike, upon a box, and then running the soldering iron along the edges. Here Chinamen in their natal costume, beside this huge four-hogshead vat of hot water, are washing off the dust and sweat of the day. Here are piles of wood for the hot tea coppers, crates of up-river hardwood charcoal for the firing pans and firing baskets. We must leave without the sight we then had of the mad dervishdance of two Chinese, who, given a dozen pounds of tea stems under their sandals in a tray, perform about the interior periphery a double shuffle, twist and grind of the en emy under the heel, that is cooler for the spectator, the thermom eter in the nineties, than for the performers from whose bodies the perspiration rolls in the tea stems below.
The box factory is elsewhere. We enter on our homeward way. It is in another old disused tea hong occupied by foreigners in the days when money was made, tumbled down now and abandoned to Chinese. Inside, a few Chinese youths, eating a dollar's worth of rice each per month, are rapidly Blueing and dovetailing to gether, by rough wholesale strokes, boxes by the score. Few nails are used, for these are handmade and cannot be afforded. What a bungling " mending " the merchant will pay for, when these frail cases reach the land of rough usage and coarse nails.
Here you see a bit of thin teawood ; there is a bit of paper gaudily daubed with cardinal colors : a stroke or two ; 'side mar ries end, the gaudy paper hides all joints, and the catty boxes, gay with bird, butterfly, dragon and phcenix, are en route to be stared at in a provincial grocer's window.
The only foreign devices we have noted in these busy establish= ments, where in the season :500 men and women are busy from daylight to dark, are a Fairbanks' scales and a Canton made fire engine. Two red tapers stuck in the earth at the door, burn for good luck, and good luck we must wish the patient set who work here.
Nearly 2,000 piculs this season have passed the sieves, one might almost say a leaf at a time. And so this year of hundreds of packing houses, some in hamlets in the hills, some, as in Foo chow, in cities ten to fifty miles from the hills. Women have car ried, each her picul, up and down the mountain pathways, twenty five miles a day, not complaining of their bent backs, nor once rudely jostled or insulted by " foreign coolies " from outside dis tricts who come starving their way toward the work offering their only food, a double handful of salt in their girdle to bite at before they drank, along the road. Boatmen at river marts have fought pitched battles for the tea, upon the transport -f which depended their livelihood.
Probably all the tea leaving Foochow has been lifted up and down as much as if it had been carried up one side of the great pyramid and down the other, a score of times. Plenty of men
have been ready to fight for the privilege of carrying it; plenty of women, too, under their loads, behind their new husbands.
The Tea Treide has long been known as one of the most specu lative in existence. It has puzzled the cleverest merchants and tea-tasters in China to mak; anything approaching a sure forecast as to the run of the markets, and, at the last moment, the most careful calculations are liable to be upset by some unforeseen cir cumstance. Tea is grown on hills in China at an elevation of 500 feet to 1500 feet abovo the plains. It flourishes in waste places which will bear no other crop, and in the neighborhood of the tea plantations there are thousands of acres which could be utilized should there be any occasion to do so. The leaf of the tea-plant can be prepared according to the demand in the markets. It must not be forgotten that the vast population of China drinks tea morning, noon, and night, and that, therefore, the amount con sumed by the tea-drinking population of England, Russia, Austra lia and the United States is but trifling compared to that drank by the natives themselves. If it suits the tea-grower to do so, he will sell his crop to be fired and kiln-dried for exportation ; but if he prefers it, he can have it dried in the sun and sold for Chinese consumption ; or, if the price is too low, he will not go to the trou ble and expense of picking the leaf, but will let it remain on the shrub. We may conclude, therefore, that for many years to come, however much the demand for Chinese tea may increase, there is plenty of leaf always ready to meet it. This will, therefore, cause us to look for the fluctuations of the trade to other causes than the extent of the crop. London merchants, brokers, and dealers in terested in tea, have, time after time, insisted on the necessity of not being in a hurry to open the market, while tea merchants in China complain of the rush to sell in London directly the tea arrives. It may be possible to hold over the tea in London, but it is not so in Hankow. The tea market there has been compared to a cattle-fair, where the farmers, having brought their beasts for sale, must dispose of them, while those of the buyers who can act with the promptest decision will make the best bargains. Besides, the Russian merchants will buy the best chops, no matter what price they have to pay for them, and if the English merchant wants really good tea, he must pay a high price, and that, too, without delay, or see it fall into his rivals' hands. Tea, on its arrival, is stored on the up-country junks, which lie at the mouth of the river Han, and are at the mercy of the winds, of the freshets that occur in the spring, and of fire. As the tea is sold it is moved into go downs, to be weighed, marked and matted, and then shipped. It is, therefore, evident that the tea-men must sell with as little delay as possible.—London Grocer.